Note 2: Firewalls and routers may interfere with a VPN connection. If your VPN will not connect, disable the firewall or bypass the router to verify these aren't the problem. Most corporations, school districts, and military installations use firewalls to protect their systems. Using VPN at your jobsite typically will not work.

A VPN connection creates a secure, encrypted connection with the university. This allows the users to do several things from home they cannot do on a normal connection. IT has two VPN servers:

Library Resources (from your home) aka Transporter

Access the library periodical databases via the UCCS Library

(The Library VPN is also used to access other off-campus resources; e.g. Human Resources and Financial Systems)

Note: when connected to this VPN server, the security restricts you from many other resources - remember to log out of VPN when you're finished

UCCS Resources (from your home) aka Voyager

Transfer files to and from your on-campus IT account or a professor's account

Updating Symantec Antivirus from off campus; e.g. laptops, dorm computers during the summer, staff/faculty with university computers at home

Access to your on-campus email with Outlook if you're on the Exchange server (The web interface to Exchange does not require VPN)

Access to your on-campus email with any other email client (This protects your password since email software programs also send your user name and password to the internet in plain text)

Create an on-campus Facilities work order

Although we do not recommend using insecure FTP, if it's necessary to FTP to an on-campus resource, you must connect to the VPN server first to create a secure path

You must also connect to the VPN server first to use Telnet to access an on-campus resource; e.g. SPSS on lynx.uccs.edu